100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Friday, March 15, 1918. Seventeen year old Joe Dominick will have time today to think over the way he treats his parents and sister as he sits in jail awaiting a police court hearing.
Dominick is arraigned in city court this morning, but his hearing is set down for tonight. He was arrested last night on a complaint from his parents. He’s accused of “pawning his mother’s shoes for the sum of thirty-five cents, threatening to burn down the house in which he and his parents reside and also threatening to ‘lick’ both of his parents if they did not accede to his expressed desires,” The Saratogian reports.
“It is charged that in addition to swearing and using vulgar language to his parents, he stole clothes from his mother and sister and pawned them to obtain money for his own uses.”
Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t report on the ultimate disposal of Dominick’s case.
Dr. Burton Predicts Municipal Theater
“A revolution has begun in this country” that will result in municipal theater companies forming across the nation, according to University of Minnesota professor Richard Burton, who speaks tonight at Skidmore School of Arts.
“The sad truth is that up to ten or twelve years ago we as an American people had done absolutely nothing” for municipal theater, Burton says, “We have lagged behind all the other peoples of the world…. Giving the devil his due, I am compelled to say that Germany [America’s enemy in the world war] is a hundred years ahead of us in this respect.”
Among the signs of revolutionary change Burton cites is the fact that popular plays are increasingly published in book form and acquired by local libraries. “That means the drama is making its literary appeal as well as its dramatic appeal,” he explains. In addition, “Every self-respecting educational institution has incorporated some sort of course on the drama.”
Municipal or communitysupported theater is the wave of the future and a cultural necessity, Burton argues. “The theater is one of the five important educational influences on men and women,” he says, “It has that influence because of the very fact that theatergoers do not go for the purpose of being educated.
“Then, every good play appeals to you by way of the emotions, and the only education that is worth while comes to us through the emotions.”
Burton isn’t worried about competition from the movies, which have their own unique educational value. “The worst in the movies can’t possibly be as bad as the worst in the spoken drama,” he says, and both are preferable to “the saloon [and] the brothel.”
— Kevin Gilbert